Page 40 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Georgina silenced the little voice in the back of her head that told her that this wasn’t normal. That mistakes like those should never happen. What would she do if that voice was right? If she’d made a mistake in giving up everything to marry Colin?

She listened to the sound of her infant son’s plaintive cries.

He needed her. And she couldn’t do this on her own.

Most of the time she felt like she could hardly make it through the day, so how was she supposed to start over?

How would she provide for her son with no career, no support, no one she could turn to?

She couldn’t. She had to believe that Colin was telling her the truth, that it would never happen again.

“I’m going to make this right,” Colin swore, clinging to Georgina’s arm as she got up to tend to their son, and she’d wanted more than anything to believe him.

The next day, he came home with a gold necklace.

“Get undressed,” he demands now. No sign of the remorse he once felt at the pain he caused her. It seemed to get easier for him over time, his outbursts more frequent, his apologies less sincere until eventually they’d stopped altogether.

Georgina complies, her eyes avoiding his, her face burning with shame as she unbuttons her blouse, lets her skirt drop to the floor. She can’t look at her husband, doesn’t want to see how much he’s come to take pleasure in her shame.

Georgina wonders whether something happened with his latest mistress.

It’s been so long since Colin looked at her in this way.

Yes, Georgina knows about Colin’s many affairs.

But they’re of no consequence to her. It was only a matter of time before whoever this person was saw his true colors.

And good for her for getting away while she could.

Georgina is just biding her time until she can do the same.

She’d tried leaving him once before. It was after Christina was born, when she realized she couldn’t blame the stress of Colin’s job for the darkness in him.

He hadn’t laid a hand on her in almost a year, since before she’d gotten pregnant for the second time, and that was just long enough to allow her to convince herself that it wouldn’t happen again.

Until it did. She can’t recall now what pushed him over the edge that day, why he’d struck her in their kitchen while Christina napped in her crib and Sebastian played on the floor of the living room, pushing metal cars across the carpet.

But she remembers the way he’d looked at her afterward, the way she no longer saw guilt in his eyes but disgust. She remembers the way Sebastian had stopped playing, the way he looked, curiously, at his mother, as if waiting for her to show him how to react.

She’d smiled at Sebastian, assured him that Mommy was okay, that he should go back to his cars, but she knew then that she’d have to leave.

That night, she waited until Colin fell asleep and then carried her two beautiful sleeping babies into the car and strapped them securely into their car seats.

She didn’t have a plan, she didn’t know where she was going, but she knew she couldn’t raise them in that house.

Not with him. He was going to ruin them, her perfect, innocent babies.

Georgina closed the passenger doors as quietly as she could, but when she turned around to get into the car, Colin was standing in their driveway, his eyes glinting menacingly in the moonlight.

“Going somewhere?”

“I can’t live like this, Colin,” she’d said, a slight tremor in her voice at the sight of him.

“And what is your plan, exactly? You have no job, no money of your own, no friends, nowhere to go.” He smiled then, his teeth a flash of white in the dark, and Georgina had never hated him more.

It was the first time she’d realized that he’d done this on purpose, that he’d trapped her.

He’d built her a gilded cage and she’d naively walked right into it.

“I’d rather live on the streets than with you.”

“You’re certainly welcome to do that,” Colin said calmly.

“But you aren’t taking my children with you.

If you leave, I can promise you that you’ll never see them again.

I’m a lawyer, remember? A partner at one of the biggest firms in the country.

I know every judge in this county and the next, and every single one of them loves me. ”

Georgina could picture it, Colin laughing in the courtroom, charming the judges he practiced in front of like he did everyone else.

“There’s not a chance in hell that you walk away with these kids,” he continued. “So just know that if you leave, you’re leaving them behind.”

Georgina knew he was telling the truth. Colin would fight tooth and nail to keep her children away from her.

Not because he wanted them but because he didn’t want her to have them.

That would be her punishment for daring to walk away from him.

She could fight back, she could try, but he would win. He always did.

“You can’t give them the kind of life that I can,” Colin added as if reading her mind.

He had so much while she had so little. “Look at all of this.” He swept his arm across the view of their beautiful house, their quiet cul-de-sac.

“It’s everything you ever wanted for them, isn’t it?

So much more than you ever had. Are you going to take that away from them? ”

Georgina looked through the car window at her peaceful, sleeping babies, at their tiny, innocent faces. If she left Colin, she’d risk leaving them with him. Who would protect them then?

“And if you do,” Colin said with a sneer, “if you leave me, if you leave these kids, I’ll never let them forget it. I’ll make sure they know exactly what kind of mother you were.”

Georgina opened the car door and lifted Christina from her car seat.

Her infant daughter curled into a tiny ball, her breath soft on Georgina’s neck as she held her close.

Georgina imagined the things Colin would tell her as she grew older, the lies he’d feed her, poisoning her against her mother. She knew then that there was no escape.

Georgina would have given it all up. The nice neighborhood. The big house. The money, the comfort, the status. None of it was worth the price she was paying. But she’d never risk losing her children.

“You belong to me,” Colin says now, his eyes like burning coals raking over her exposed skin. “And you will not lie to me again.”

“I’m s-sorry,” Georgina says, her words as broken as she is.

“Well, luckily for you, I know exactly how you can make it up to me.” Colin reaches for his belt, the metal buckle jangling as he unfastens it.